Friday, January 13, 2012

The complexity of Japanese puzzle boxes has astounded me since I started collecting them several years ago. The hand laid exterior wood work is enough to call them 'well designed', but it is the intricacies of the puzzles secret mechanisms which drove me to hoard them. Upon first observation they appear to be simple ornate decorations, but with closer inspection to someone who knows the secret there are hidden mechanisms which slide in specific order to allow access to the chamber inside. These boxes range from simple, a few moves to open, to very difficult requiring several hundred moves to open. To myself I think the boxes how how Japan is culturally. As a foreigner to their history, culture, and customs I view Japan as incredibly complex and intriguing from the exterior, yet I know that there is much more than meets the eye to that amazingly unique country.